


the hunt

by copperwings



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Bratva, Gun Violence, Hair-pulling, M/M, Mafia AU, Minor Character Death, Russian Mafia, Shooting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 06:39:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13161348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperwings/pseuds/copperwings
Summary: ThePalachis a hitman with a reputation of being emotionless and efficient. All the syndicate families only use his services when they want to off one of their own and make it look like someone else ordered the deal. ThePalachis a ruthless killer, but he does have one rule:no women and no children. Looking way younger than his age saves Yuri Plisetsky from being slaughtered alongside six Nikiforov men, but afterwards nothing is the same. He finds himself on an escape journey through the underworld after he finds out that he was the intended target of the hit, and that someone is determined to finish the job.There is no one Yuri can turn to for help, aside from a happily smiling Thai syndicate boss who owes him one and the anonymous hitman who held him at gunpoint. ThePalachknows who ordered the hit, so Yuri intends to find him, squeeze the information out of him and have his revenge. Somehow.





	the hunt

**Author's Note:**

> [tameholly](https://tameholly.tumblr.com/) won my follower giveaway and I promised to write a fic that would be at least 1k words, for the pairing of their choice and the rating of their choice. They requested Otayuri mafia AU, rating anything up to explicit.  
>  -  
> So I know next to nothing about mafia AUs, I’ve never written anything mafia related and I don’t even read a lot of mafia AUs, so this is just my imagination taking a prompt and fucking running with it. (That’s probably how this ended up 19k words instead of 1k, whoops?)  
> -  
> палач ( _palach_ ) [RU] = executioner

At nineteen, looking way younger than his age is the only thing that saves Yuri Plisetsky as he’s staring into the barrel of a gun.

Yakov and Victor think it’s useful that he’s almost twenty but looks sixteen. They like to take advantage of his aura of youthful innocence, because it comes in handy when people underestimate Yuri.

Yuri stares at the gaping mouth of the gun and the pair of brown, emotionless eyes behind it, and he waits for death to take him. He’d like to think his gaze is steady, but underneath the clothing his entire body is trembling, every muscle pulled taut.

The shot never comes. Instead, there is the click of a safety slid back in place and the muzzle of the gun retreats.

“I said no children,” a monotone voice states. There is a hint of roughness in the tone, betraying annoyance.

Yuri’s first instinct is to snap, _I am fucking nineteen_ , but he holds his tongue. His tongue has gotten him in trouble so many times in his life that Victor says it’s only a matter of time before it gets him killed.

Yuri is not about to prove Victor right.

Around them in the living room, six of Nikiforov’s men lie on the floor or over couches in various states of near-death.

Yuri doesn’t know who ordered seven of Victor’s men dead, but he can guess who he is facing. He’s heard the stories, just like everyone else has.

That means this is an inside job.

The hit was probably not ordered by Victor himself, because why would he waste good men like this? Most likely it’s someone trying to wiggle their way into the position Victor now holds as Yakov’s right-hand man. Victor was supposed to be here today, so it’s likely he was meant to be among the dead.

“Turn around,” the monotone voice orders, and for a split second Yuri considers not obeying. After all, it’s clear that the man is not going to kill him, or he would already be dead.

Then Yuri turns around and stares at the blood pooling under Vasilyev who is still twitching on the floor, his body not quite grasping the fact that he’s already dead. Yuri has witnessed enough shot wounds to know a lethal one when he sees it. There is a vacant stare in Vasilyev’s eyes as he grasps his stomach as if that would keep the flowing blood inside. There is a bitter taste in Yuri’s mouth and he can’t seem to swallow it.

“On your knees,” comes another order, and Yuri drops to his knees, wincing as the marble floor forcefully meets his kneecaps. “You did not see me,” the voice tells him. “Because if you tell anyone you saw me and lived to tell the story, I _will_ hear about it, and I will come get you later in life when you least expect it.”

Yuri doesn’t doubt the words one bit. He stares at the blood dripping from between Vasilyev’s fingers and expects to be knocked out cold, but that doesn’t happen either.

Instead, there’s the sound of footsteps retreating, and as Yuri whips around, he sees the back of the hitman as he walks out of the house, leaving behind six dead men and one alive Yuri Plisetsky, who immediately scrambles to find his phone in the pocket of his jacket that hangs over the backrest of a chair.

“Victor,” Yuri says breathlessly into the phone. “You need to come here _right_ _now_. Everyone else is dead. No, I don’t know what happened, I just came here and—”

 

*

 

Yuri stands by the window and waits for the cleanup crew. Victor arrives within fifteen minutes, accompanied by five silent men who begin carrying the bodies into a van, disguising them as trash containers dragged across the yard.

Yuri stands in sullen silence and watches as they begin the painstaking process of cleaning blood puddles off the floor and splatters off the walls. The blood is drying, turning darker in color and forming smears that look like someone dragged red wine stains across the cream-colored carpet. The stench of iron, vacated bowels and shattered intestines is enough to make Yuri’s stomach turn like it wants to get rid of everything he has ever eaten.

He resists the urge to throw up, even though it would hardly add much to the cleaning crew’s workload.

In the next room over, Victor is still on the phone. Yuri can hear him explaining, “He doesn’t _know_ , he walked in and found them like this. What, are you suggesting he pulled a gun and killed six of my men? That’s not even—”

Yuri stares out of the window and listens to Victor shouting into the phone and the sound of floors being scrubbed behind him.

He knows who the hitman was.

The _Palach_.

The _Palach_ is a man everyone knows _about_ , but no one _knows_. He has made it clear that he does not tie himself to any one family or syndicate. He is at their disposal when he chooses, which means when the money is good enough. He’s shot down members of all the rivaling bratva syndicates that scrape for more power within the murky corners of the underworld. By logic he should be dead by now, because he’s been on everyone’s side at least once and that’s bound to ruffle some feathers. Yet he remains, like an untouchable statue. No one knows his real name nor where he came from. Everyone knows his reputation, though, and that is that he has no weaknesses, not one. No known family ties, no one close to him who could be used as a weapon against him, _nothing_. His face is said to be expressionless at all times, although he does all his deals anonymously and only few have even caught a glimpse of his face.

The _Palach_ is a blank slate to pour blame upon and a terror to anyone he’s sent against. Mostly he deals with the shady side of the coin, taking care of the deals where the families need to get rid of their own people and make it look like someone else ordered it. Everyone knows it’s happening and it keeps them all on their toes.

All bratva syndicates use him sparingly. He’s only called upon when it’s absolutely necessary, and he doesn’t leave witnesses. He has one rule, though, the one that just saved Yuri’s life and because of this rule Yuri now contradicts the statement about leaving no witnesses.

_No women, no children._

And now Yuri has seen his face.

 

*

 

Everything falls back to a resemblance of normalcy pretty soon, albeit Victor is now six men short on his personal guard. Yuri stays home for a while afterwards, staring blankly at whatever’s on TV and drinking whiskey on the rocks until he can’t feel his toes. They let him be for a couple of days because he saw six dead men and that’s a sight that’s bound to rattle the bones of even the most weathered syndicate boss, let alone an _upstart_ like him. He knows he’s expected to get back to work as soon as possible, because screw his mental health. Six men are dead and that’s left a gap to fill when it comes to running errands.

On the third morning Yuri wakes up with a mild headache and slight nausea tugging at his guts. He dresses in silence and straps his gun to his side, sliding his suit jacket to cover it.

As he’s about to step out of his apartment, he notices the piece of paper on his doormat on the inside of the door. Yuri bends to pick it up and then stares at the note slipped under his door. It’s just four words printed on a piece of paper.

_THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU._

There is no signature or any clue as to who has left the note. It has just appeared sometime during the night.

Yuri grasps the piece of paper in his hand and makes his way to the window. He cracks the curtain open to look down at the street below. People are walking along the sidewalks, cars are passing, and all in all it just looks like a normal Tuesday morning in the neighborhood.

But out there, someone is watching. He can feel it even if he can’t see it.

Yuri touches his side, feeling the reassuring weight of his gun in its holster under his jacket.

Who is coming for him? And why?

Victor has mostly been in hiding ever since the incident, and he told Yuri to keep a low profile as well.

Yuri frowns. Could it be Victor who’s ordered him killed, then going into hiding so he can wait until the job is finished? After all, he _was_ supposed to be there when it all went down, but he got delayed. Yuri’s brow knits together as he lets the curtain drop, the room falling back into its previous dim state. But why would Victor want him killed? Why would anyone in their syndicate want him killed? As far as he knows he’s not a threat to anyone.

Maybe it’s the Chinese. They’re probably still sour about the deal that went south a few weeks ago. Yuri grimaces as he remembers the incident. There were a lot of dead Chinese onboard the cargo ship after their meeting, and Chris got a bullet in the leg and is now recovering on a tropical island somewhere. All in all, that didn’t really go as planned.

But the Chinese would not use the _Palach_.

Maybe it’s Yakov who wants Yuri gone. He shouted at Yuri after the incident with the Chinese, telling him in very clear terms what will happen to him if he fucks up again. To Yakov he is a nobody, compared to Victor who is Yakov’s son in all but name.

Yuri swallows. Right now, it doesn’t matter _who_ wants him dead, because whoever is coming for him knows where he lives.

The thought shakes him into movement. Yuri whirls around, dropping the note on his bed. He strips his designer suit off and drops the pieces of clothing on the floor like they’re worthless. Digging around his closet, he finds a pair of old jeans on the lowest shelf, along with a plain gray hoodie and a worn-out leather jacket. He considers his choice of footwear for a moment. His sneakers are Prada and way too distinguishable with their leopard print. After some digging, he discovers a pair of holey black converse he hasn’t worn in ages and pulls them on. They feel weird on his feet after wearing Gucci custom leather for so long. Yuri snatches spare ammo from the drawer of his nightstand and a thick wad of cash from the box underneath the couch, shoving everything into his pockets. He also takes the anonymous note after a moment’s hesitation, because leaving it behind would alert anyone coming in that he’s onto them.

On his way to the door, he lets his hair down from the tight ponytail he usually keeps it in, ruffling the blond strands until they settle around his face in a tangled mess. He looks at himself in the mirror. He looks nothing like Yuri Plisetsky, member of one of the most powerful bratva syndicates in St. Petersburg. He looks like a regular teenager on his way to high school. Only this teenager is carrying a loaded weapon under the hem of his leather jacket, shoved in the waistband of his jeans. Yuri pats the gun through his clothes and watches his reflection mirror the movement with a grim look on his face.

He leaves behind everything that can be traced: credit cards, phones and his laptop. He does take a burner phone and an unused prepaid sim card, though, along with a notebook with all the important numbers he might need.

At the door he stops to hesitate. Where can he escape? Is there a safe place in this city for someone like him? The other bratva families would not hesitate to blow his head to bits, and now he has to doubt his own syndicate as well. There is absolutely no one he can trust.

Except maybe one person.

One person, who owes him a favor. Yuri knows it’s a lot to ask, but he has to try. He turns to take a last look at the apartment, which in its current messy state looks like a poor college student’s lair rather than the condo of a rather wealthy man.

Yuri closes the door after him with a click and turns to face the stairwell.

He freezes for a second.

There are footsteps approaching from below, and suddenly there is cold sweat pouring out of Yuri’s pores. It could be a neighbor... or it could be someone else. The four words of the note seem to bounce around in his head.

_THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU._

He sneaks up one floor, quiet in his rubber-soled shoes, and hides behind the bend of the stairs, waiting.

The footsteps below walk across the floor to his door and stop there.

Yuri closes his eyes and stops breathing, listening to the sounds from below.

That someone behind his front door stops as if listening, then knocks on the door.

“Yura! It’s me!”

Yuri bites the inside of his cheek. For a wild moment he’s sure they’ve come to rescue him, that Victor has sent Georgi to fetch him.

Then he hears the unmistakable click of a gun safety being pulled back.

Yuri forces every muscle of his body to freeze before they can betray him to the man standing below.

“Yura?” Georgi asks again through Yuri’s front door. Then he speaks to someone else, probably through an earpiece. “He’s not here. Or at least he’s not answering the door. Should I break in?” He is quiet for a moment, then continues. “Copy that. I’ll come back later, see if he’s around.”

Yuri stays hidden behind the stairs for at least five minutes after Georgi has walked down the stairs and the front door of the building has slammed shut.

Then he gets up with shaking legs and sneaks down the stairs, his hand under his jacket, ready to pull the gun if needed.

He almost ends up shooting a neighbor who carelessly slams her door open into the hallway and walks out with a trash bag. The neighbor stares at the gun for a second, then starts screaming, and Yuri bolts down the stairs and into the basement.

His heart races in his chest as he navigates the quiet basement hallways. He can’t go out through the front door. They are probably watching the entire building. Luckily, there is a way from the basement of this building into the basement of the next one, well-hidden behind all the junk in Yuri’s basement storage. If there’s one thing he’s learned, living all his life in the shadow of the bratva wars, it’s that it never hurts to be prepared.

Once he’s crawled through into the next building, Yuri makes his way to the ground floor and walks out of the building through the back door. He pulls his hood up and slips into the constant stream of people walking down the street.

There is only one thought circling in his head.

Is it Victor who wants him dead? And if not, then who?

Yuri turns a corner and bounces down the stairs to the underground station. He buys a ticket and jumps on the northbound train.

Time to cash in that favor Phichit owes him.

 

*

 

The Thai restaurant in the corner of a busy street looks nothing more than an innocent eat-all-you-can buffet, and even in his current gut-wrenching state of fear Yuri can’t help but inhale then rich scent of spicy food as he steps in. However, hangover laced with fear might not be the best grounds for an Asian buffet, even if his life wasn’t in danger.

A smiling girl greets him at the register, and Yuri simply flashes the card Phichit handed him almost a year ago. The smile falters slightly and the girl glances over her shoulder toward the kitchen. She shouts something Yuri doesn’t understand, and soon a burly-looking man in all-black clothing appears to glare at Yuri from head to toe.

“I’m here to see Phichit,” Yuri says, not willing to let the man’s size throw his confidence off-balance. He can’t help but glance behind him as the doorbell chimes, though. He half-expects Georgi or someone else walking in any second, gun pointed at him.

How did his life become such a nightmare?

He expects to be asked to follow through the kitchen like in those idiotic mafia movies, but then again, the movies get everything else wrong so it makes sense they got this wrong as well. He’s motioned to follow the big man through the front door outside, where they walk around the corner and down an alley.

If the man leading him looked like someone with an ounce of humor, Yuri might jokingly ask, _is this where you kill me?_ , but concluding from the stony side profile of his guide the joke would not be well-received.

They arrive at a door at the end of the alley. A quick rap of knuckles and the door swings open, revealing a poorly-lit hallway that looks like it’s last been cleaned sometime around Stalin’s death. Another man stands in the doorway, and Yuri’s guide says something in what is probably Thai.

“In there.” Yuri is motioned to enter the building, and the door slams shut after him. He follows his new guide down the hallway, dodging pieces of trash along the way.

Once they clear out of the shitty hallway, the establishment they enter is a whole another world. The door at the other end of the hallway opens into a wonderful indoor courtyard garden with a glass ceiling, complete with a natural-looking creek flowing through the yard. The walls rise five stories up on each side, and Yuri realizes that Phichit must own the entire damn block.

There are plants and shrubs lining the path that Yuri is ushered down.

In the middle of the courtyard there is a fabric gazebo with a stack of pillows underneath instead of furniture. As soon as Yuri steps in under the gazebo, he is greeted by the friendliest smile on this side of the planet. Or perhaps any side of the planet, or _any_ side of _any_ planet for that matter.

Yuri doesn’t know how someone who constantly looks so happy can be the head of a rather large crime syndicate, but somehow Phichit makes it work. Phichit might be all smiles, but he’s far from being an idiot. Only fools let his smile trick them into trusting him.

Yuri doesn’t trust Phichit, but he trusts Phichit to remember he owes Yuri one.

It’s the only chance Yuri has.

“Yuri Plisetsky,” Phichit drawls as he sits up straighter on the pile of pillows, his smile staying put throughout the process of careful articulation. “Good to see you, although you look like you’ve seen better days.” His eyes measure Yuri’s choice of clothing from the holey sneakers up to the hood covering his head, but the annoyingly bright smile remains unchanged.

Yuri doesn’t waste time on pleasantries and cuts to the chase. “I need protection and you owe me one,” he says, dropping the hood back and running his fingers through his messy hair.

Phichit doesn’t look the least bit surprised. “Someone gunned down six Nikiforov men not three days ago,” he confirms.

Yuri doesn’t ask how he knows this.

“And you’re worried they’re after you?” Phichit asks.

“I just know if I stayed where I was, I wouldn’t live to see my twentieth birthday roll around,” Yuri states.

Phichit’s smile stays in place but his eyes squint inquisitively. “I see.”

“You owe me,” Yuri says again, because suddenly he’s not sure if Phichit is going to help him after all. “Remember, I saved one of yours, and you said you owe me big time.”

“Yes, we established that,” Phichit says, and Yuri is almost grateful when the smile diminishes just a notch, replaced by mild annoyance. Phichit nods toward the pillows across from him. “Please, sit. I don’t like to discuss unpleasant things craning my neck uncomfortably like this.”

Yuri has a feeling that the request is not as much a request as it is an order thinly veiled as a request. He plops down on the pillows and crosses his legs under him. It feels weird to sit on a pillow, because usually he either stands guard or sits on couches and armchairs of varying degrees of plushiness. Crossing his legs beneath him like this feels like old times, before Yakov deemed him old enough to start working for the bratva. After that it’s been all formal pinstripe suits and sitting in chairs. Seems like Phichit with his gazebo has missed that particular memo about crime syndicate leadership.

Phichit waves a hand and a young man appears from somewhere, nodding in acknowledgment. “Fruit punch and mango slices for me and my guest, please,” Phichit says.

The man nods again and walks across the indoor garden and inside the building through an open door.

“So,” Phichit says, crossing his fingers on his lap. “If I give you protection, does that mean I’ll get the entirety of the Feltsman bratva banging on my door tomorrow?”

“If you or anyone who’s seen me here tells them where I am, possibly,” Yuri says. He can’t be sure, because he still doesn’t know who wants him killed. Georgi was just following orders, that much Yuri knows. But he doesn’t know if Victor is in on it or not.

Yuri would never admit it aloud to anyone, but Victor is the brother Yuri never had. It would feel a bit… _hurtful_ , if Yuri got to know Victor wants his head on a plate for whatever reason.

“I choose my people carefully,” Phichit says as if Yuri just insulted his staff. “Unless someone saw you walking in, your location is safe within these walls, at least until I can smuggle you someplace else where you are safe.”

Naturally Phichit doesn’t want to keep Yuri around his headquarters longer than is absolutely necessary. That would be like allowing vermin in your garden.

Their fruit punch and mango slices arrive, and Yuri notices that now that he’s relatively safe for the moment, his mild hangover is finally giving way to a starvation-level hunger. The portion of mango is not going to do anything to keep that at bay for long. Yuri munches down the slices of mango and the fruit feels so delightfully refreshing in his whiskey-abused stomach that he doesn’t even care if Phichit is poisoning him right now.

Phichit doesn’t seem the type to poison people under his own roof, though.

“There’s something else,” Yuri says once he’s finished with his portion and lowers the bowl on the floor beside him.

Phichit is enjoying a slice of mango at a lot slower pace than Yuri. “Oh?” he simply asks, and the tone of the single syllable indicates that whatever Yuri wants, he’s probably _not_ going to get.

Yuri sighs. _Well, here goes anyway._

“I need to get in contact with the _Palach_ ,” Yuri says.

Phichit’s eyebrows rise slightly. “The _Palach_? Who do _you_ want to off?”

“That’s none of your business,” Yuri replies.

He doesn’t want to off anyone. _Yet_. What he does want is information only the hitman knows. Like for example, who ordered the hit on Victor’s men three days ago?

 

*

 

Yuri is politely stripped of his gun and shown into a lavish room with deep burgundy tapestries and wooden furniture in reddish brown shades. He doesn’t get direct orders but it’s implied he should stay there. The door is not locked as far as he can tell, but he’s pretty sure that if he opens the door he will find one of Phichit’s men conveniently loitering around the hallway outside. Yuri kicks his shoes off and leaves them by the door before pacing across the room to the window.

The windows of the third-floor room have a view over the courtyard garden, and Yuri stands by the wide windowsill, watching Phichit’s people as they occasionally pass through the garden on their daily chores. The garden looks like a small tropical oasis in the middle of the bleak St. Petersburg neighborhood. The ivory-colored roof of the gazebo prevents him from seeing if Phichit is still in the garden, but he doubts it. The cunning Thai didn’t build his empire by sitting around in gazebos sipping fruit punch all day long.

Yuri doesn’t know how long he’s going to be contained in the room, so he takes a tour. The carpet that covers most of the floor feels soft under his sock-clad feet. There is a massive bed with a mahogany frame and a matching nightstand with empty drawers. On the opposite wall stands a lacquered desk with a plush-looking office chair pushed under it. The desk drawer holds a blank notebook and a pen and there are a couple of classic novels in the bookshelf beside the desk, but other than that the room is empty and impersonal.

The adjoining bathroom is decorated in shades of white and gold, contrasting with the dark burgundy of the room. The bathroom is equipped like a hotel room with small bottles of shampoo and a disposable toothbrush, along with a travel-sized toothpaste.

After the cursory tour, Yuri starts going through the walls and furniture. He is fairly sure they are watching him, and if so, he wants to know where the cameras and bugs are.

He finds a bug in the desk lamp and spots a small camera hidden inside the wall, the camera lens almost blending into the swirling patterns of the tapestry. Yuri raises his eyebrows at the camera and waves.

He’s lying on the massive bed, flicking uninterestedly through _War and Peace_ , when there is a knock on the door.

“Come in!” Yuri calls.

The door swings open and a woman carrying a tray of food enters. She nods in acknowledgment and goes to lower the tray on the desk, before nodding her head again and disappearing through the door.

Yuri slams the book shut and sits up. Well, at least it’s not Phichit’s intention to starve him to death. He goes over to the tray and inhales the scent of ginger and lemongrass from the steaming bowl of soup.

After eating, he paces restlessly around the room. _War and Peace_ is a bit too much to concentrate on even on a good day, and this is decidedly _not_ a good day.

Yuri sits on the windowsill and stares out into the courtyard. In a few short days, his life has turned completely upside down, and now as soon as he’s in a place where he can _kind of_ relax, the thoughts come to haunt him. He’s always known that tangling his lifeline with the bratva wars was going to be risky, but this is ridiculous. He has barely scraped the surface, he is practically a nobody. Why the sudden hunt after him?

Who ordered the hit on Victor’s men? It’s clear to him by now that he was meant to die on that day, but the _Palach_ looked at him and deemed him too young to die. The memories of the incident come flooding back—the scent of gunpowder and blood, and agitated groans of men dying all around him, the _Palach_ gunning them down without a hint of emotion on his face.

Yuri swallows to keep the soup down, and blinks his eyes rapidly. The courtyard’s brightly-colored flowers blur for a moment, and then he wipes his cheek, casting an angry glance at the camera watching him from the tapestry.

 

*

 

“So, I have some good news and some bad news,” Phichit says next morning when Yuri is escorted into an office that looks markedly more like an actual office than the gazebo in the garden. There are two men standing right behind Phichit again—as if Yuri was going to do anything to harm Phichit, unarmed and in the middle of Phichit’s complex.

“Spill,” Yuri says, leaning back in the armchair he’s sitting in.

“Well, I can either arrange you to a place where you might be able to find the _Palach_ , _or_ I can arrange you to a safe place. But these two things happen to be mutually exclusive, so you can have either or, not both.” Phichit smiles and sips tea from a porcelain cup.

Yuri curses under his breath. It figures that he’s finding himself ushered between rock and a hard place.

His first instinct is to ask for a safe location, but the longer he thinks about it, the more it starts to feel like that would just be a temporary relief. Sure, he would be safe, but he’d also be hidden inside walls with no way of finding out what happened and no way of knowing when it’s safe to reemerge. If ever.

 _Or_ he could risk his life chasing after the deadliest hitman in recent history.

Fun times.

Yuri twists his hands on his lap, and seconds seem to tick by all too quickly while Phichit politely waits to Yuri to reach a decision.

Yuri does have an advantage when it comes to finding the _Palach_ , though.

Yuri knows what he looks like, exactly. To the last fucking hair on his head. A hitman who leaves no witnesses doesn’t use a disguise, and that’s why Yuri Plisetsky now walks around St. Petersburg with an imprint of the guy’s face burned to his memory.

Yuri looks up from his lap. “I want to find the _Palach_ ,” he says.

If Phichit is surprised, it doesn’t show. He simply nods, his smile as bright as ever, and starts typing something on his phone. He says something in a low tone, and one of the men walks around the table. “You can stay in the garden while I get things ready. Khalan will escort you. If you need anything, it will be delivered to you.” Phichit glances up. “Within reasonable limits.”

Yuri wasn’t going to ask for a pet tiger, but whatever. “Okay. Thanks.”

“And after this, we are even,” Phichit says. It’s not a question, but Yuri nods nonetheless.

He spends a couple of hours in the courtyard garden, eating vegetable stew and fruit as they’re brought to him. Does Phichit always eat this damn healthy, Yuri wonders, craving a burger. Oh well, it will all soon be over.

Hopefully it’s just his self-inflicted imprisonment in Phichit’s headquarters that’s going to be over, and not his life.

 

*

 

That night, Yuri gets dumped out of the car outside what looks like a nightclub. Phichit handed him another card and told him to show it at the door, and from there on he would be on his own.

Yuri glances at the card in his hand. It’s written in code, so he can’t read it, which makes this all the more disconcerting. For all he knows, the card could say, _please butcher the one carrying this_ , but he supposes he just needs to trust Phichit.

It’s not like he has any other choice.

There is a line at the door, but Yuri pulls his hood up and flashes the card, and he’s allowed immediate entry.

Once inside, Yuri blinks at the rapidly flickering lights and the loud bass booming from the sound system.

Yuri walks around the club aimlessly. Phichit’s instructions stopped at the door, so now he needs to figure out the rest by himself. He makes a routine check that there aren’t any familiar faces around—from other syndicates _or_ his own—and when he’s convinced that no one will appear to press a gun to his temple, he makes his way to the bar.

Yuri absently orders a drink, and as he pays it he flashes the card at the bartender, asking if he knows anything about it.

The bartender eyes the card blankly and shrugs.

Yuri sighs and grabs his drink, walking around the club once more. He stops by the dancefloor, where a dozen bodies are grinding and moving more or less along with the beat of the music. The strobe lights seem to cut their motions into slices, making it seem like they change from one position into another without moving at all in between. Yuri watches the cut-up slices of movement for a moment while he’s trying to work out who is staring at him.

He’s developed quite a good hunch about when someone is following his moves, so he knows there is someone watching him now.

Yuri’s eyes slide over the grinding mass of people, until he’s looking across the dancefloor and finds a pair of eyes staring at him.

It’s the exact same stare then it was three days ago, only this time there is a dancefloor full of people between them, not a gun.

Yuri sees the almost-imperceptible nod of head, gesturing him to come around the dancefloor.

Yuri swallows, setting down his untouched drink. He walks around the dancefloor and his eyes follow the _Palach_ as he climbs down from the DJ booth and stands beside it, waiting.

Yuri walks over and he is motioned to follow without a word.

They walk behind the DJ booth, through a set of velvety curtains and to a door in the wall that opens as the man walking in front of him flashes an electronic key at the lock.

When the door closes after them, it dulls the boom of the music to a muffled mixture of beats and melodies. They are in a short hallway that looks like a designated dumping area for empty beer kegs and wine boxes. Yuri’s converse sneakers stick to the floor on each step.

A few steps into the hallway, the man leading Yuri turns around and locks eyes with him.

Somehow, the _Palach_ looks shorter without a gun pointed at Yuri’s face. Yuri realizes they’re even in height, or the hitman could even be slightly shorter than he is.

_And this one called me a child?_

Yuri measures the man in front of him and sees that he is doing the exact same thing.

“How did you find this place?” the _Palach_ asks, his voice monotone.

Yuri hesitates. He’s not sure what he should say, so he offers the card Phichit gave him instead.

The _Palach_ takes the card and squints at it. “Damn Chulanont,” he mutters under his breath.

“Phichit owed me one,” Yuri says, even though it’s not exactly his place to defend Phichit. But then again, Yuri doesn’t really have many friends these days, so perhaps he should start counting the grinning Thai among them. At least he didn’t try to shoot Yuri, and these days, that’s enough in Yuri’s books to start calling him a _friend_.

“You need to leave,” the _Palach_ says, handing the card back to Yuri. He makes a move toward the door.

Yuri blinks. “No _way_ ,” he says, grabbing the _Palach_ ’s wrist without thinking.

The _Palach_ looks down at the hand holding his wrist, and Yuri quickly lets go. He can’t afford to forget who he is dealing with, even if the hitman looks a lot less threatening in a plain black hoodie and jeans.

Acknowledging that this is the _Palach_ doesn’t stop Yuri from glaring at him. “I am currently being hunted down by my own fucking bratva and I want to know who is behind it. Who ordered the hit on Nikiforov’s men?” he demands.

The _Palach_ looks slightly surprised, which is something, because it’s the first display of any kind of emotion Yuri has seen from him. His face quickly settles back to its original emotionless state, and he turns his head toward the door as if listening. “Fine. You can wait here. I still have work to do.”

With that, he walks out of the storage room and leaves Yuri standing in the stale beer smell with his feet sticking to the floor.

Yuri stares at the closed door, and he hears when the beat of the music changes. Yuri rolls his eyes at the ceiling and curses whatever higher powers have led him to this fate.

So, the _Palach_ is a hitman by day and a DJ by night. Not the most likely occupational combination, but that doesn’t matter. At least Yuri has found the man who has the answers he needs.

Now it’s only a matter of getting the answers out of him.

This should be fun.

 

*

 

Yuri is sitting on a beer keg and spinning an empty wine bottle with his foot when the door is opened.

Yuri looks up, expecting to see the emotionless brown eyes, but instead he’s staring at a brown-haired bar worker hauling in yet another empty keg.

“Who are fuck are you and how did you get in here?” the bar worker asks, glaring at Yuri.

Yuri is considering his options, which are threatening the guy with a gun or trying to make a run for it, when the curtain is pulled back and the _Palach_ walks in.

“He’s with me,” the _Palach_ says.

“Bek, you can’t just bring your hookups into the storage room,” the bartender grumbles.

“He’s not my hookup,” the _Palach_ says.

“Are you sure? He’s your type,” the bar worker says, wiggling his eyebrows.

“ _Goodbye_ , Emil,” the _Palach_ says, staring the bartender down until he laughs and leaves the room.

Once the door is closed again, Yuri tilts his head curiously. The scary hitman is starting to look less scary by the minute. Although he expects anyone would look scary when aiming a gun between his eyes.

But now, without a gun and with a definite blush creeping on his face, the _Palach_ looks anything but scary.

“Jesus, you _can’t_ be the ruthless killer everyone has been afraid of for the past two years,” Yuri mutters with a disbelieving huff.

The eyes are on him again, staring him down. “I can dislocate your shoulder if it helps you to feel more afraid.”

“No, thanks.” Yuri takes a step back. “Do your bar worker friends know what you do as your _other_ occupation?”

The _Palach_ snorts and Yuri is pretty sure he wants to roll his eyes but restrains himself from doing so. “Obviously not.”

“But how can you keep your secret identity, when anyone can just walk in and see you above the dancefloor?” Yuri asks, shaking his head.

The Palach looks at him disbelievingly. “They don’t train you to be very smart in the bratva, do they?”

Yuri glares at him.

“Any member of the bratva walking into the nightclub would see nothing but a DJ at the turntables. I do all my deals anonymously and leave no witnesses. For a good reason.” The last utterance is a jab aimed at Yuri.

“What does the card say?” Yuri asks, waving the card Phichit gave him.

“Nothing related to me. I’ve handed those out to select clients, and it’s basically just a free VIP entry to this club. Some of them are for other clubs, ones I don’t even work at. Once you’re in the club and you ask around enough, I might hear from somewhere you’re looking for the _Palach_. Then I will contact you when it suits me. That’s how it works.”

That’s why they haven’t been able to connect him to any one place. The _Palach_ moves around and initiates all contact. People don’t find the _Palach_ —he finds _them_.

“You sure don’t make it easy to hire you,” Yuri mutters.

“Exactly, and that’s why I’m still alive. Plus it weeds out everyone else besides the ones who really, _really_ want my services.”

“So I could have walked into this club on another night and never found you,” Yuri says, more to himself than the man beside him.

“Pretty much.”

The thought makes him feel cold somehow. “And I’d be dead.”

He sees the shrug from the corner of his eye. Like it isn’t the _Palach_ ’s problem in the least.

“The bartender called you Bek,” Yuri remembers.

There is a frustrated sigh. “And _this_ is why I don’t fucking leave witnesses. Jesus. Do I really need to drag you out of here and shoot you? Because I will if I have to, even though you’re—”

“I am fucking _nineteen_ ,” Yuri snarls, the words that have been boiling beneath the surface finally bubbling out of his mouth.

That elicits a flicker of emotion on the otherwise expressionless face, but it’s not surprise like Yuri expects.

No, the _Palach_ looks _amused_.

“I know,” he says and turns to the door. “Put your hood on, I don’t want to be seen with Yuri Plisetsky, age nineteen, known member of the Feltsman bratva. People might start wondering about my identity.”

Yuri blinks.

He _knew_. When he aimed the gun between Yuri’s eyes, he _knew_.

“I don’t half-ass my gigs, musical or otherwise,” the Palach says. “Of course I knew who you were and how old you were. I know everything about the people I kill. I know where they live, I know their schedules, I know who they’re fucking.”

“Was it you who left the note?” Yuri suddenly blurts, because nothing about this makes sense anymore, so this might be the only explanation.

The straight eyebrows pull together in confusion. “What note?”

Yuri starts rummaging through his pockets and once he finds the four-word note that was slipped under his door, he hands it over.

The Palach looks at the note and Yuri sees him mouth the words. “No, I didn’t leave this.”

Then who did?

The Palach hands the note back and nods toward Yuri’s head. “The hood. We have to get out of here before you jeopardize everything.”

Yuri hesitates. “Are you a cop?”

He gets a dry smile in response. “No, definitely not a cop. Now come on, or I _will_ shoot you and get rid of the evidence. I’m good at that, you know.”

He doesn’t say it like he’s bragging. He says it like it’s just god’s honest truth.

It probably is.

 

*

 

Yuri is not sure if he should feel safer or more in danger because he’s accompanied by the _Palach_ as he’s walking down a quiet street in the middle of the night.

“What’s _Bek_ short for?” Yuri asks. He can’t just keep referring to the man as the _Palach_.

There is a sigh. “Otabek. Why do I get the feeling I’m going to have to kill you because you know too much?” The tone is dry and humorous, but Yuri isn’t a hundred percent sure if he is actually joking.

“Otabek.” Yuri tests the name out, then kicks at the sidewalk as he walks. “Who am I going to tell? Everyone else seems to want me dead, it figures you do too.” He tries to keep the bitterness in his tone to a minimum, but some of it seeps through anyway.

“Trust me, if I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

“Yeah I remember, I don’t tend to forget when someone aims a gun at my face,” Yuri snaps.

“And yet you still follow me around,” Otabek replies.

“Because I want to know who wants me dead so I can _avoid_ being dead a little longer,” Yuri groans, frustrated.

Otabek gives him a glance from the corner of his eye. “I don’t make a habit of revealing my customers’ identities to people. That’s a good way of getting a bad rep.”

Yuri wants to roll his eyes, because the infamous hitman is worried about his _reputation_.

“People do not hire someone who blabs their business to the first passer-by,” Otabek explains patiently.

“Then why _am_ I following you?” Yuri grumbles.

“Fucking good question.”

“Why did you drag me out of the club if you had no intention telling me who hired you to off me?” Yuri asks.

Otabek looks at him again like he’s stupid. “Because I need to determine how much of a threat you are to my operation.”

“So if I tried to walk away now, you would stop me?” Yuri asks, side-stepping from the sidewalk to the asphalt of the street.

“You wouldn’t. You have nowhere to go,” Otabek points out.

It’s kind of true, but Yuri takes another step, distancing himself from Otabek a bit more.

“Plisetsky, you’re playing with fire.” Otabek’s voice is low.

Yuri grins. “So, if I were to, say, run to the middle of the street, screaming that you’re the _Palach_ , you’d kill me?”

“If I had to.”

Yuri feels the stupid rush of adrenaline whirling through his body. “I am as good as dead anyway. If you don’t help me, my bratva kills me. If I annoy you too much, _you_ kill me. _What do I have to lose_?” He screams the last words so loudly that the walls of the surrounding buildings echo with the sound.

Otabek moves very fast when he wants to. Yuri learns this in about two seconds, when he’s being grabbed by the lapels of his jacket and slammed into the metal wall of a dumpster. Well, at least it’s the _outside_ wall of the dumpster, so that’s something to be thankful for.

Yuri doesn’t realize he’s laughing until Otabek loosens his grip and Yuri slides onto the ground, snorting out giggles and holding the back of his head where it hit the dumpster with an audible _thunk_.

Otabek mutters something about a psych evaluation, but that only makes Yuri laugh harder. Is this what happens to people when they run out of options and they have nothing left? They sit on the ground, giggling like maniacs, tears streaming down their faces?

An extended hand enters his blurry field of vision, and Yuri blinks at it. Then he realizes Otabek is offering him a hand to pull him up and he moves to grab it.

He’s pulled to his feet like he weighs nothing. But then again, he was just lifted and slammed against a dumpster with similar ease. Otabek must be packing some muscle beneath his unintimidating hoodie-and-jeans exterior.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” Yuri asks, still holding onto Otabek’s hand. “Would have saved me a lot of trouble. Would have saved _you_ a lot of trouble, too.”

“I agree,” Otabek says. “But I didn’t think you deserved to die.”

Yuri tilts his jaw defensively and lets go of Otabek’s hand. He wipes his cheeks. “Why’s that?”

“You have never killed anyone unprovoked.”

Yuri snorts. “Well, I’m not sure who is to blame for the deal with the Chinese going the way it did, but I’m not some innocent fucking choir boy,” he says through gritted teeth. “Don’t fucking put me on a pedestal, I’m not a goddamn saint.”

“And there it is,” Otabek says quietly.

“There _what_ is?” Yuri asks. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans onto the side of the dumpster. The back of his head is beginning to throb from being slammed against the metal.

“You’re not good, but you have actually stopped to think about if what you do is right, and you know that it isn’t right,” Otabek explains. “That’s why you live, while six other men died.”

“You think there is a single person in the bratva who doesn’t know what they’re doing _isn’t_ right?” Yuri huffs. “What gives you the right to play god? Did you ask them if they knew what they were doing was wrong?”

Otabek leans onto the side of the dumpster beside Yuri. He sighs. “I’m not perfect. Sometimes people have died when they should have lived. And that’s something I’ll carry with me. But when it comes to those six, I have nothing on my conscience. Or can you look me in the eye and say they were good men?”

Yuri swallows as he recalls the empty eyes of the dead men. Bukin taught him how to fight. Vasilyev taught him how to shoot a gun. Ostrovsky teased him mercilessly about his looks, but only because they made a fun-looking pair on missions; Yuri was as small and fair as Ostrovsky was dark and bulky. They used to call them the fairy and the bear.

“They were good men to their own people,” Yuri mutters.

“Everyone is good to someone.”

Otabek is being good to him now.

Yuri looks at the opposite wall in the dead quiet neighborhood and chews on the thought. Everyone else seems to be out there to get him, but the previously nameless faceless hitman is here beside him, offering him a hand and _not_ aiming a gun at his head.

Guess that puts him on Yuri’s sad friend roster right beside Phichit.

What a band of friends Yuri has. A smiling Thai syndicate boss who would probably blow Yuri’s head off if he appeared on his doorstep again, and a hitman who has shot countless of people and might or might not blow Yuri’s head off if he proves to be too much of a nuisance.

Yuri blows all the air out of his lungs in an audible sigh, then inhales and turns to Otabek. “So, what happens now?”

 

*

 

At nineteen, Yuri Plisetsky is pretty sure there is no worse emotion to be at the receiving end of than _pity_.

Although he supposes it’s good that Otabek pities him, because otherwise he could just have crawled into the dumpster last night and died.

Instead, he is sitting on a motel room couch in the gray light of the morning, waiting for Otabek to return. It’s not exactly safe for him to show his face around town, so here he is, waiting for the deadliest hitman in all St. Petersburg to get him a burger.

All because Yuri Plisetsky looks young and innocent and something to be pitied.

He hates it, but if it keeps him alive, he will tolerate it. For now. As soon as he finds out who wants him dead, he’s going to off that person and then vanish someplace nice and warm. There are plenty of nice tropical islands in the Pacific, plenty of vast open space to disappear to, as soon as he’s gotten rid of the one who ruined his life.

He hopes it’s not Victor.

He sits on the couch and stares blankly at the TV screen that’s showing some random cooking show. The cheap motel room is exactly like one would expect at the nightly rate they have going. The bedspread looks like it gets changed only when there’s so much jizz on it that it keeps the shape of the bed even when taken off the bed. Yuri tried to not touch it as much as possible last night when he crashed in the bed, and upon waking he draped the offending bedspread over the foot of the bed, leaving most of the bed uncovered.

Yuri glances at the closed door. He has no idea why the _Palach_ of all people is helping him.

Everyone loves a good rags-to-riches stories, but what happened to the ones that tell it the other way around? Three days ago, Yuri Plisetsky drank expensive whiskey and wore tailored suits. Now he sits on a dirty motel room couch wearing jeans and a hoodie, topped off with sneakers that are falling apart at the seams.

It’s not that he doesn’t have money put away. He just doesn’t have access to that right now. But still, this is starting to feel like his life is playing one cruel joke after another on him.

The door opens, and Yuri reflexively touches the gun beside him on the couch.

Otabek comes in carrying burger joint paper bags and a plastic bag from a grocery store.

The smell of greasy fries and burgers makes Yuri’s stomach grumble. He hasn’t eaten anything since dinner the previous day, and his stomach seems to remember this as soon as the scent of a cheeseburger hits his nose.

Yuri awkwardly tosses a few rumpled notes on the table. Otabek glances at the notes but doesn’t take them. Instead he hands the paper bag to Yuri, and Yuri takes it and spreads the contents on the table.

Otabek sits back in an armchair while Yuri eats. He takes off his shoes and sets them aside, but after he’s done he returns to his previous position, watching Yuri with dark eyes. It should be disconcerting to have a hitman watch him as he stuffs his face with a cheeseburger, but Yuri is too hungry to actually care.

When Yuri is done, he goes to use the bathroom. After flushing the toilet he stands and stares at his reflection in the mirror. His hair is a greasy mess of tangles hanging loose around his face, his mouth is a straight line and his eyebrows seem to have permanently furrowed close together.

The _Palach_ got him the room under a false name last night after he crashed and burned next to a fucking dumpster. Yuri recalls his bout of hysterics and it makes him grimace. Yuri Plisetsky went after a hitman and then cried next to a dumpster and the hitman had to get him a place to crash.

No wonder Otabek pities him.

Yuri runs his fingers through his hair a few times in a vain attempt of detangling it, but then gives up and returns to the room.

Otabek is not in the armchair anymore, and Yuri whips around to see him standing by the window, staring at the street outside through a crack in the curtains.

The absurdity of the situation dawns on Yuri. Here he is, in a cheap motel room with a man who four days ago shoved a gun in his face. And that man just brought him a cheeseburger.

“This is ridiculous,” Yuri huffs, more to himself than to Otabek, but Otabek turns around nonetheless.

“What is ridiculous?” Otabek asks.

“That I’m in a motel room eating cheeseburgers with the _Palach_ ,” Yuri mutters, stroking his fingers up and down his arm.

He gets a low chuckle in response.

Yuri glances at his gun that’s still on the couch. He’s growing careless. He should keep his gun within reach at all times, but here he is, wandering around the room and going into the bathroom without it.

“Can’t you just tell me who it was?” Yuri asks, sighing. “They won’t live long enough to tell anyone you blabbed their identity, I can guarantee it.”

Otabek’s response is a silent look that speaks volumes.

Yuri rolls his eyes. “You don’t think I can do it. You’re speaking like I’m better than the people in my bratva, but I’m not. I’m not _trying_ to be, either.”

In response, Otabek’s mouth tightens just a fraction, but he still doesn’t say anything.

Yuri groans. “That is fucking annoying, you know? Hard to keep up a conversation when the other participant doesn’t fucking say anything.”

“What would you like me to say?” Otabek asks in a tone that is irritatingly even and calm.

“Fucking _anything_ ,” Yuri snaps.

“I just did,” Otabek points out.

Yuri thinks the edges of his vision actually go red in anger.

Getting angry at the _Palach_ might not be such a good idea, but then again, what does he have to lose?

“Oh, you’re such a fucking _asshole_ ,” Yuri snarls, taking a step toward the couch and his gun. “Thanks for the burger and the room, but I’m done with this shit. So can you fucking shoot me now and be done with it? And if not, just fucking tell me who I can aim my gun at so we can both be done with this pity party?” Yuri waves his hand around, gesturing at himself and the motel room.

Otabek’s brows inch closer together and he tilts his head slowly. He takes a few steps closer so they’re nearly toe-to-toe.

“Pity?” Otabek asks in a tone that is dangerously soft.

Yuri huffs. “Well, that’s what this is, isn’t it? Poor little blondie Plisetsky, looks so vulnerable and small, can’t shoot him, better protect hi—” Yuri’s sentence is cut short as Otabek’s hands grab him by the front of his hoodie and slam him against the wall next to the bathroom door.

Yuri can already conclude from the very short time period of their acquaintance, that this seems to be Otabek’s signature move when someone irritates him. Just grab the offending person and slam them against the nearest wall.

“You think this is because I _pity_ you?” Otabek asks, pressing Yuri against the wall so hard his shoulder blades are probably going to bruise.

“Well what fucking else could it be?” Yuri spits back, scowling. “First you don’t shoot me when you’re supposed to, then you pity me enough to get me a motel room and then you show up next morning asking what I want for _breakfast_. What am I supposed to think about that?”

Otabek’s hands let go of his shirt, but before Yuri has time to regain his bearings, Otabek’s right hand slides behind his neck and Otabek’s left hand grabs Yuri by the chin, tilting his head.

“What—” Yuri has just time to ask, before he’s pressed against the wall again.

Only this time he is trapped between the wall and Otabek’s lips on his mouth.

Yuri gasps at the contact, and then goes to grab Otabek’s hair at the back of his head where it’s longer. Otabek seems to think this is a part of the game, because he lets out a noise that’s almost like a groan. This quickly turns into a surprised noise when Yuri twists his fingers into the hair and tugs, forcing Otabek to pull back.

“Asshole,” Yuri repeats his earlier sentiment. His heart is beating in his chest so loudly that Otabek can probably hear it, but Yuri keeps glaring angrily at the man who just fucking _kissed_ him. Like that’s a normal, reasonable thing to do in this situation.

They stare at each other for a few silent seconds, Yuri still holding Otabek’s hair tightly in his grip. Otabek doesn’t look regretful. If anything, he is smirking. His right hand is still at the back of Yuri’s neck, and Yuri feels him grabbing a handful of hair in retaliation.

Otabek tugs on the hair at the nape of Yuri’s neck as if testing the reaction it elicits. Yuri keeps his face straight and doesn’t wince at the pain from his abused hair follicles.

They stand there for a few more seconds, hands fisted in each other’s hair, and then the corner of Otabek’s mouth twitches.

“Are you fucking laughing?” Yuri asks, twisting his hand in Otabek’s hair in a way that must be painful.

The corners of Otabek’s eyes wrinkle, and then the fucking douchebag _is_ laughing, his mouth opening to let out a series of loud chuckles. He leans closer, until Yuri’s hand gripping his hair stops him just short of Yuri’s mouth.

“You know, I like it when my hair is pulled,” Otabek murmurs suggestively, and Yuri can’t help the knee-jerk reaction of immediately letting go of Otabek’s hair.

He realizes a fraction of a second later it was a mistake to let go. Otabek was leaning away from the grip of Yuri’s hand, and once the hand is gone from his hair, there is nothing stopping their lips from crashing back together.

Yuri stands frozen for a moment, feeling the soft pressure moving against his lips, Otabek’s breath on his face and Otabek’s tongue licking its way into his mouth.

There is a fleeting moment when Yuri has a passing thought of responding to the kiss. The physical contact against his body and his lips is mesmerizing and intoxicating, something he could easily cling onto in this moment of desperation.

But Yuri Plisetsky is nothing if not stubborn. That’s what Victor always says, and this time Yuri doesn’t care if he proves Victor right. He’s not going to fall victim to a good-looking, smirking hitman. At least not before teaching him a lesson.

Yuri shuffles his feet just slightly, moving his weight from one foot to the other. Then he lifts the other foot up and stomps it on Otabek’s sock-clad toes as hard as he can.

Since he’s only wearing sneakers, it’s probably not much in terms of pain-inducement, but it’s enough to make Otabek yelp in pain and pull back. He releases his grip from Yuri’s hair and steps back, lifting the injured foot and grimacing as he brings his hands around it to feel for fractures.

“Didn’t your mom teach you about _asking_ people before kissing them?” Yuri hisses. He kind of wants to go fetch his gun and aim it between Otabek’s eyes, but he stands rooted in the spot where he was pushed moments ago, breaths heaving his chest and staring at Otabek angrily.

Otabek looks up, having concluded that his foot is not seriously injured. His eyes are dark. There’s anger in them, but also something that Yuri has seen before and can easily classify as lust.

Otabek lowers his foot on the floor. He steps closer until he’s almost in Yuri’s personal space. For a moment, Yuri thinks he might get punched in the face. You don’t just stomp on the _Palach_ ’s foot without consequences.

Instead, Otabek tilts his head and raises one eyebrow, and there’s that _smirk_ again. “Well, may I?”

“Do you get off on pain or something?” Yuri blurts out, because he almost tore a handful of hair off the guy’s scalp and then stomped on his toes and yet here he is, asking for more.

The anger in Otabek’s eyes seems to melt into amusement. “Well?” he only asks.

He is annoyingly hot, even when he’s smirking like an asshole.

“Fucking whatever,” Yuri mutters and pulls Otabek back against him.

There is a rational part of his mind that is screaming like it’s being dragged into the depths of hell, but Yuri ignores it. He is frustrated and angry to the point of snapping, and he has nothing to lose anymore, so he might as well fuck the dude who tried to kill him. Yuri pushes all his frustration and anger into the kiss, so it ends up harsh to the point of bruising.

Otabek doesn’t seem to mind.

Their lips move as if they’re battling instead of cooperating. It’s messy and uncoordinated, their tongues pushing back and forth like the winner will be determined by who has more tongue in the other’s mouth. Yuri’s fingers find Otabek’s hair again and tug at the strands roughly, and the groan it elicits against his mouth seems to ripple through his body. Otabek is flush against him, their hips making small movements against each other. Heat starts gathering low in Yuri’s stomach where Otabek’s hips move, pushing toward him.

Otabek’s hands appear to grab the front of Yuri’s hoodie again, and seriously, is that like a _thing_ for him or something? Because he seems to do that a lot.

Otabek breaks the kiss. “Bed,” he breathes, and then Yuri finds himself dragged across the floor and to the bed with its disgusting bedspread.

“No, I’m not going to lie on top of _that_ if I’m going to be naked,” Yuri says as Otabek is about to push him down on the bed.

Otabek huffs out a laugh and pulls the bedspread off, tossing it to the side. It falls on the floor in a heap.

The sheets don’t look much more inviting, but beggars can’t be choosers, and besides, he’s already slept the night in them. Yuri sees movement from the corner of his eye and turns to look at Otabek. Otabek is pulling his shirt off, and yes, Yuri was correct in his assumption that the guy is packing some muscle. Yuri gets stuck staring at the abs, and the tattoos across his body, and the trail of dark hair pointing down from Otabek’s navel like an arrow disappearing into his jeans.

Yuri’s eyes follow the arrow, because what are arrows for if not that?

The line of Otabek’s cock is clearly visible through his jeans, and Yuri feels a sudden urge for both of them to be naked, _now_. He unzips his hoodie and shrugs out of it. When he pulls his undershirt off over his head and is momentarily blinded by the fabric, a pair of rough hands appear to roam over his body as if investigating the merchandise. Fingers slide up his stomach and his chest, circle his nipples and trace his collarbones. The sensation of being touched while he can’t see is intense, and Yuri shivers before pulling the shirt off his face and tossing it aside.

Otabek’s hands are still sliding over Yuri’s skin, exploring. As soon as Yuri is shirtless, one hand comes to grab him by the hip and pulls him closer while the other cups the back of his neck, and the bruising kisses are _on_ again. Only now there is also a whole lot of warm, bare skin against Yuri’s chest. Not that he minds, because the muscles beneath the skin are to die for. Yuri feels those muscles as he grabs a hold of Otabek, one hand around his neck and one stroking his back.

Otabek’s cock is pressing hard against his own, and Yuri decides that there are absolutely too many pairs of pants in this equation.

He pulls back and nods toward Otabek’s jeans. “Take those off,” he manages in a low, hoarse whisper before fumbling with the buttons of his own jeans.

Otabek’s response is that irritating, silent smirk again, and Yuri swears he’s going to wipe that smirk off his face as soon as he can get out of these stupid fucking pants.

Otabek’s jeans are apparently easier to get rid of, because he’s naked way before Yuri manages to tug his own jeans off. Yuri pushes his boxers down and removes his socks, and then he’s naked in a disgusting motel room with the deadliest hitman in all of St. Petersburg.

What has his life become?

Yuri pushes all thoughts aside and lets his eyes roam over Otabek’s body. There are more tattoos decorating his legs and Yuri wants to lick those thighs, because _damn_. If Yuri is going to die soon, he can at least be thankful that he got to fool around with a man that looks like a Greek statue come to life.

Well, aside from his dick, because the display in front of Yuri’s eyes is miles away from the puny, finger-sized wieners of said statues.

“Like what you see?” Otabek asks, and if his voice didn’t crack a bit at the end, betraying his wanton state of mind, Yuri would smack him in the face for being an arrogant douche.

Yuri steps right against him and brings a hand up to pull at Otabek’s hair roughly, forcing him to tilt his head back. Yuri feels the immediate effect against his hip, because Otabek’s cock twitches. The jerking movement is followed by a low groan, and Yuri tugs at the hair harder, marveling at the response it draws out. When he lets go, Otabek attacks his lips again, bringing their mouths together in a harsh clack of teeth.

Yuri finds himself pushed onto the bed, and he shifts to allow Otabek to slide down onto the mattress beside him. Otabek is looking up and down his body, and Yuri cocks an eyebrow. “Admit it, you didn’t save me because you thought I was worth saving. You saved me so you can bang me into next week or something.”

“It wasn’t a decisive factor, but it definitely is now.” Otabek’s eyes are very dark as they travel up Yuri’s body to his face.

Yuri grins and rolls over and right on top of Otabek in one not-so-smooth move. He has to look where he’s placing his legs, because kneeing someone in the crotch is probably the fastest way to stop them from wanting to have sex with you, and he wants to avoid that. He hovers above Otabek for a moment and then lowers his hips down, grinding against Otabek.

They both groan, and Yuri drops down onto his elbows. He smashes his mouth onto Otabek’s and Otabek tilts his chin up, offering better access.

Yuri’s entire body feels electrified, and he’s acutely aware of every spot where his body is touching Otabek’s. His fingers are tangled in Otabek’s hair, their lips are sliding against each other’s frantically, and their hips are moving, uncoordinated and erratic. Every slide of Otabek’s cock against his sends pleasure rippling under Yuri’s skin in waves.

He pulls up from the kiss. “So,” Yuri says breathlessly. “How are we going to do this?”

Otabek looks up from beneath him and then flips them around so Yuri ends up on his back with Otabek on top of him. For a moment, Otabek only stares down at Yuri in silence. They’re almost at a standstill, but their hips are making small snappy movements, like they are unable to stop moving completely.

Otabek grinds down, with purpose, and Yuri moans.

“Either this,” Otabek says. He grinds down again, and Yuri thoroughly enjoys the expression of slack-jawed want on Otabek’s face.

“Or hands.” He slips a hand between them and squeezes the tip of Yuri’s cock. Yuri can’t help the frantic push into Otabek’s hand, nor the moan that falls out of his mouth right after.

“Or mouths,” Otabek says, letting go of Yuri’s cock and leaning down to ghost his breath on Yuri’s lips.

Yuri bucks up with his hips. The rushed exhale that escapes Otabek’s mouth at the contact of their cocks is intensely satisfying. Yuri tries to think, in the middle of sloppy kisses and grinding hips, but it’s getting increasingly difficult. Otabek’s tongue is in his mouth, and Otabek’s lips are firm and demanding.

Yuri pulls him off by the hair and smiles at the groan this evokes. “Your mouth,” Yuri gasps. “Definitely want your mouth.”

Otabek struggles against Yuri’s tugging fingers in his hair until his face is in the crook of Yuri’s neck. He bites down on the side of Yuri’s neck, _hard_ , and then follows it with soft licks across the tender skin.

Yuri gasps at the tingling sensation of the bite followed by soft laps of Otabek’s tongue. His hand slides out of Otabek’s hair, allowing him to move down Yuri’s body. Otabek bites down on his collarbone, then his chest, near his nipple, trailing bites and licks on Yuri’s skin on his way down toward Yuri’s crotch.

By the time Otabek gets to hip level, Yuri thinks he’s going to explode. His cock is straining hard against his stomach, twitching at the lack of contact, seeking release.

Otabek pushes Yuri’s legs apart so he can kneel in between them. Then he makes a final detour, biting Yuri’s hipbone with a force that stings and makes Yuri yell out loud. The burning sensation is immediately followed by a soothing touch of Otabek’s tongue, and it makes Yuri’s cock twitch against his stomach. The tingling feel of the bites on his body is delicious, but it keeps Yuri in a limbo-like state of non-release, only offering more sensory input on areas that are _not_ his cock.

Yuri lowers an arm over his eyes, inhales and almost tells Otabek to either suck him or fuck off, when Otabek’s mouth is suddenly at the tip of his dick, taking him in slowly.

Yuri groans low at the back of his throat. The arm thrown over his eyes shifts as he goes to grab the sheets above his head, fisting them tightly in an attempt to remain still.

Otabek starts moving his head up and down, and the wet warmth surrounding Yuri feels incredible. He can almost feel his spine popping at the restraint of not bucking his hips up. But choking someone who can strangle you or shoot you is probably not a good idea, so he keeps still, grabbing the sheets and biting his lip.

Otabek pulls off, his hand moving to absently stroke Yuri’s cock. “You can move,” he says in a tone that reveals he’s aware of the internal struggle Yuri is having with himself. There’s that annoying smirk, and finally Yuri has the means to wipe it off. So he glares at Otabek and shoves his head back down, his fingers gripping Otabek’s hair.

Otabek slides his mouth down Yuri’s cock, going almost all the way down. Yuri gasps, allowing his hips to move on their own accord, snapping up and down until he’s fucking Otabek’s mouth. He can feel himself hitting the back of Otabek’s throat, and Otabek’s mouth constricts around his dick as warm heat moves up and down Yuri’s dick.

Yuri can feel the release looming just around the corner. It’s building in his core like a nuclear meltdown, making his spine shudder and his hips move faster.

He grips Otabek’s hair tighter, tries to warn him. Then Otabek moans around his cock. Yuri can feel the vibrations down to his toes and that opens up the floodgates.

“ _Shit_ ,” Yuri gasps, and then he’s coming into Otabek’s mouth, hips lifting forcefully off the bed and jerking a few more times before coming to a stop.

Yuri’s hand drops from Otabek’s hair and he lies on the bed, feeling like every one of his bones has melted into goo.

He watches as Otabek gets up from between his legs, wiping his mouth. Otabek’s mouth is red and his eyes are gleaming. His cock is standing hard against his stomach and leaking at the tip.

As soon as he’s within reach, Yuri tugs him close by wrapping a hand around his cock. Otabek’s eyes widen at Yuri’s choice of handle to grasp, but then he lowers himself onto his side next to Yuri with a chuckle.

Yuri adjusts his grip and starts pumping Otabek’s cock in lazy strokes. He should probably take a more active stance but he’s still coming down from his own high, blood rushing in his ears, and this is about all he can muster right now.

Otabek gives him about thirty seconds to recover, and then he tugs Yuri’s hand off his cock and pushes Yuri down by the shoulder. The meaning is clear enough: _my turn_. Yuri slides down the bed until he’s level with Otabek’s cock.

Yuri estimates the length and girth and thinks, _Yup, I’m going to choke on that_.

There are probably worse ways to go.

He does choke a little, but seemingly Otabek is more merciful about letting himself go than Yuri was, because he doesn’t fuck himself into Yuri’s mouth. Instead, he keeps inhumanly still as Yuri sucks up and down his cock and nearly gets lockjaw in the process.

Yuri gets no warning when Otabek comes, but suddenly the dick in his mouth shoots warm, salty liquid down his throat, and Yuri’s eyes water as he tries to keep from gagging.

“You could warn a guy, you know,” he says as he sits up, swallowing and wiping his mouth.

“I _could_ ,” Otabek drawls. “But where’s the fun in that?”

Yuri glares at him. So Otabek is one of those guys who gets off on his hair being pulled, his feet stomped on and choking people on his monster dick?

Great.

 

*

 

Afterwards, Yuri watches Otabek as he sits in the armchair, cleaning his gun, dressed in nothing but boxers.

There are several scars on his body, littered in between the tattoos and across the tattoos. Yuri tries to determine the cause behind each scar. One is definitely a knife slash. Another, through his shoulder, decidedly a gunshot wound. Yuri almost wants to circle around him to see the exit wound on the other side.

He realizes Otabek’s hands have stilled all motion and he is now staring back at Yuri.

“I’m analyzing scars,” Yuri says with a shrug.

“Occupational hazard,” Otabek states, but the corners of his mouth rise to form a dry smile.

Yuri lifts his arm to show the one prominent scar he has, a slash across the back of his arm right above the elbow. “Trust me, I know all about that.”

Otabek looks at the scar and his smile turns into a smirk.

Yuri huffs. Seemingly this hitman still thinks he’s a harmless, pitiful little creature.

“This is lonely work,” Otabek says. “Can’t risk getting close to anyone, because they might be used against me.”

Yuri blinks. Where did this suddenly come from?

 _Oh_.

“So is this how you dump me?” Yuri asks, batting his lashes.

The eyes are on him again, staring him down. “I’m still alive because I have no one I’m close to. No weaknesses, you know. I’m trying to keep it that way.”

“Get over yourself. I’m not trying to fucking _marry_ you,” Yuri huffs. “If you just tell me who ordered the hit on the Nikiforov men, then we can salute each other and go our own merry ways. I’ll go off the douche who wants me dead and then vanish out of this hellhole city. And you can go on shooting people and choking them with your huge-ass dick. Everybody wins.”

Otabek snorts out a laugh at the part about his dick. “But you have seen my face. You know my name. You are a liability. What’s stopping you from telling everyone who I am?”

“Oh, I’ve seen a lot more than just your face,” Yuri mutters. “Seriously, I don’t care who you are. I only care about keeping myself alive until I can shoot the motherfucker who wants me dead. After that, I am _gone_.”

“Yakov,” Otabek says evenly.

Yuri blinks. “What?”

“Yakov made the order.” Otabek looks at him.

Yuri stares at Otabek, but he doesn’t really see him. He’s scrolling back in his memories, thinking, what on earth has he done to make Yakov order a hit from the _Palach_ to off him?

And wasn’t Victor supposed to be there?

Yuri is fairly sure Yakov would rather watch the world burn than let any harm come to Victor.

Victor was delayed that day, though. It must have been Yakov’s doing. Keep Victor from being at a meeting where he was supposed to be, make it look like someone from the outside wanted Victor dead.

…Maybe Victor is in on it?

No, he can’t be. Victor might be a pain in the ass but this is something he would never do.

But why Yuri? What has he done to Yakov?

“I don’t suppose he gave you a detailed account of the reasons why he wanted me dead?”

Otabek shakes his head. “I was told a time and place, along with a list of men who would be present. I was told everyone who was there should die.”

“Was Victor’s name on the list?” Yuri asks immediately. He doesn’t for a second think that Yakov wants Victor dead, but he wonders if he’s trying to keep up the pretense that Victor was supposed to be there.

“No. It was you and six other men.”

“And then you fucking had to go and save me,” Yuri mutters.

Otabek is finished cleaning his gun and he quirks an eyebrow as he slides the safety off with a click. “Well, we can always fix that if you so desperately want to be dead.”

“Fuck you,” Yuri snarls.

“Get some lube and condoms and I just might,” Otabek replies. He’s definitely trained himself to keep his tone and his face as expressionless as possible, and for a second Yuri isn’t sure if he’s fucking joking or not. Then Otabek grins, and Yuri slumps back on the couch with a huff.

Then Yuri comes to think of something.

Something other than fucking Otabek, that is.

“So,” he says, casting a contemplative look at Otabek. “How much would it cost to hire you to help me kill Yakov?”

 

*

 

Phichit does not look pleased when Yuri is escorted into his office. He’s still smiling, but the smile is laced with a hint of _oh-look-what-the-cat-dragged-in_. The two guards standing behind him are stony-faced as ever.

“Plisetsky! You’re still alive,” Phichit says.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Yuri mutters.

“I do seem to recall that when I last had you escorted out of my office, I said something along the lines of _‘we’re even now’_ , right?” Phichit lowers his phone on the table and crosses his hands on top of it.

“And I’m not asking for any favors. I’m here to trade,” Yuri says.

Phichit blinks.

“Trade, as in we exchange goods or services for both our benefit?” Yuri says.

Phichit’s face goes sour just for a hundredth of a second before he catches himself and the usual bright smile slides back in place.

“What could you possibly have to offer me?” Phichit snorts out a laughter.

“Information. About the Feltsman bratva. For you to use as you choose.” Yuri crosses his arms over his chest.

Phichit looks disinterested, but Yuri knows he’s interested. The inside information Yuri possesses could give Phichit a cutting edge when it comes to the power vacuum Yuri is about to create among the syndicates. Not that he’s telling Phichit _that_.

“And in exchange you want…?” Phichit asks.

“Information,” Yuri sighs. “About the recent moves of the Feltsman bratva. What they have been up to since I disappeared.”

Phichit uncrosses his fingers and nods toward the chair opposite his desk. “Sit down. Perhaps we have something to discuss.”

Yuri keeps his face carefully neutral as he sits down and starts bargaining with the cunning fox he knows Phichit is beneath that smiling exterior.

 

*

 

Otabek is sitting in the armchair when Yuri comes back to the motel room and pushes down the hood covering his face.

“Well?” Otabek says.

“I can say with like 85% certainty where Yakov will be tonight,” Yuri says.

Otabek grimaces. “I don’t do deals with percentages that low.”

“Fine, then I guess I’ll have to do it by myself, or die trying.”

Otabek mutters something that sounds like, “Definitely die trying.”

Yuri lets out an annoyed huff. “You haven’t seen me shoot. Or fight. What are you basing your opinions on?” Yuri asks, tilting his jaw defensively. He may look like a small, pathetic little kid, but he has done his fair share of missions where he has had to shoot people and punch them out cold, and he’s no stranger to knife fights either.

Otabek stares at him when Yuri walks over to the armchair, stopping in front of Otabek. “Try to punch me,” Yuri challenges.

“I have no reason to punch you,” Otabek says.

Yuri rolls his eyes. “You need a reason, _fine_.”

He kicks Otabek in the shin. _Hard_.

Otabek yelps and springs up from the armchair. Yuri steps back and for a moment they circle each other in the small space between the bed and the couch, eyeing each other warily as if to determine when the other is going to pounce. Otabek’s eyes are very dark and his hands are balled into fists but other than that there is no emotion on his face or visible in his stance.

The first punch from Otabek’s side is lazy, like he doesn’t even mean it. Yuri dodges it easily, and to give Otabek a better incentive, he smacks Otabek across the ear, palm open. Not hard, but hard enough that Otabek’s face immediately looks more determined.

Yuri might not be the strongest fighter out there, but what he lacks in body mass and strength he more than makes up in speed and agility.

By the time Yuri has smacked Otabek in the face three times and Otabek is yet to land a direct hit, Otabek starts to look like he’s taking this seriously.

Once he does, Yuri only gets in one more hit before Otabek catches him by the wrist and tugs him forward. As Yuri loses his footing, Otabek twists the arm behind Yuri’s back and forces him on his knees, pushing Yuri’s arm up against his back painfully.

Otabek follows him down and wraps his free arm around Yuri’s body, locking his left arm against his side. Yuri’s right arm is still pressed up and against his shoulder blades, the strain on his shoulder so bad that Yuri has to grimace as the tendons pull taut.

Otabek presses his lips almost to Yuri’s ear as he’s doubled over on the floor, whispering, “I don’t wanna ruin your face by punching it, but will this do?”

Yuri is pressed down in a hold that is inescapable, but he can still move his left hand from elbow down.

What Otabek probably didn’t account for is the tiny switchblade Yuri frees from his sock and flicks open against Otabek’s ankle because that’s the only part of Otabek he can reach. Granted, he couldn’t do much damage with a small knife from this angle but if need be, he could distract Otabek enough to free himself.

Otabek chuckles as he feels the blade press into the fabric of his jeans. He releases Yuri, and Yuri instantly scrambles away from his reach and turns to face him, knife ready.

Otabek eyes the blade. “Can’t do much with that,” he states.

“It’s not meant to be much more than a distraction,” Yuri says with a huff. “And hey, it worked,” he continues, smiling widely.

Otabek snorts. “I let you go because I had proven my point.”

“So it wasn’t because you were afraid of me jabbing this into your foot?” Yuri says. “Let me tell you, even a toothpick can cause pain if used correctly.”

“Or incorrectly,” Otabek mutters, a smile tugging at his lips.

Yuri lowers the knife a bit. “What?”

“Well, if toothpicks cause you pain you’re probably using them incorrectly, considering their original purpose.”

Yuri’s knife-wielding hand drops to the side. “You… Did you just crack a joke? A really terrible joke?” he asks, disbelieving. He can’t help the small burst of laughter, though, because really, the deadliest hitman in St. Petersburg has the lamest sense of humor.

Otabek smiles. It’s probably the first genuine, non-sarcastic smile Yuri has seen from him, and it’s fucking gorgeous.

They stare at each other for a moment.

Then Yuri folds the switchblade and puts it back into his sock. “So,” he says. “Are you going to help me kill Yakov or not?”

 

*

 

The adrenaline rushing through his body before a mission is nothing new, but this time there is a conflicting edge to it. When embarking on meetings with other bratva syndicates, there’s always a chance things go south and someone ends up with a bullet in the brain, like the deal with the Chinese proved. But this time, Yuri is going up against his own people. He will face guards who have had his back before. He has to shoot someone who has been a permanent fixture in his life for several years.

“Can’t you just take off without doing this?” Otabek asks when Yuri paces around the motel room.

Yuri stops and glances at the floor, surprised that there isn’t a groove in the floor already from his nervous pacing.

Yuri exhales and shakes his head. “Can’t take the risk. He might send someone after me. I’d spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, expecting a gun pressed against my temple.”

“And once you’ve killed Yakov, won’t the next in line continue the blood feud? So you’d still have to look over your shoulder all the time?” Otabek asks casually.

Yuri thinks about it for a second. That will all depend on Victor’s stance on this. If Victor was in on it and also wants Yuri dead, they have a problem. Then Yuri has to kill Victor as well, and he really, really doesn’t want to do that. But with Yakov and Victor both dead, the power vacuum in the bratva is enough to shatter them into smaller, bickering factions who will be too busy dealing with one another to go after Yuri. Yakov spent years combining the forces of several gangs under his name, and the animosities still run rampant in the deep lines of his bratva. Once he’s gone, Victor will have his hands full trying to keep them in line.

If Victor didn’t know of Yakov’s plans, Yakov probably knew he wouldn’t agree to killing Yuri, which in return means that Victor might regard the feud settled once Yakov is dead.

Might.

There is a lot of uncertainty in this plan, but Yuri can’t really tell Otabek this, because he would not agree to help. He seems to deal in certainties, but Yuri needs all the help he can get right now. All he has is his handgun, the tiniest switchblade in the world and enough ammo to kill like ten men. Eleven if he hits with every bullet in his possession.

“No,” Yuri says slowly. “I don’t think Victor will continue it.”

As they leave the motel room and close the door behind them, there is a sense of finality in the click of the lock. Yuri walks over to the mailbox outside the reception and drops the key in. This is it.

Otabek arrived at the motel on a motorcycle, and once they’re outside he straddles the bike and motions Yuri to sit behind him. Yuri does so, and the bike roars to life beneath them.

Otabek steers the motorcycle toward the address Yuri gave him, and Yuri clings to his waist as the bike accelerates down the street. Yuri’s ears are filled with the thumping of his own heart, blood rushing in his veins, pumping adrenaline into his limbs.

They have gone over the plan several times. The location where they’re headed is not one Phichit knew, so it’s a safe bet considering what Yuri knows of Yakov’s schedule. It’s one of the hideouts Yakov has around the city for when he wants to relax. It’s a house in the suburbs, a nondescript large home between a park and another house.

Yakov usually has two men with him here, three if there’s bad luck. But even with three guards, that’s only four men. Yuri has witnessed Otabek taking out six, so he’s pretty confident of their chances.

When they get to the location and make a hideout in a nearby copse in the park, the house looks quiet. For a moment Yuri is afraid Yakov isn’t here after all, and they’ll have to abandon the plan. Then someone walks past a window, a dark shadow visible through the sheer curtains.

Yuri passes the binoculars to Otabek. “They’re there.”

Otabek takes the binoculars and peers at the house down the hill. “How many?”

“Can’t tell for sure but like I said, usually there’s only two men with Yakov. Three at most.”

They make their way out of the shrubbery when it’s starting to get dark. They walk toward the house, trying to stay covered. When they get to a spot where they can climb the fence surrounding the house, they both pull their hoods on to conceal their faces. Otabek also pulls up a scarf that was around his neck, covering his face so only his eyes are visible.

Yuri touches his lower back where the reassuring weight of his gun is pressing against his skin. The spare ammo is in his pocket. He also has another gun and some more ammo, courtesy of Otabek, who said he’s not going to walk into a deal with Yuri insufficiently equipped.

Once they’ve scaled the fence, they crouch down and advance cautiously. Yuri knows where the cameras are, so he leads Otabek through the garden, slipping past the cameras unnoticed. Once they’re in sight of the back of the house, Yuri sneaks into a rosebush and Otabek follows him suit.

They spend a few minutes determining if there’s any movement in the ground floor, but the house looks still and quiet.

“They must be in the basement,” Yuri says, his mouth nearly touching Otabek’s ear. “That’s where the pool and sauna are.”

Otabek gives a tight nod of acknowledgement.

The only weak spot in their plan is how to get inside without being detected. Breaking down a door is the best way to alert people to your presence, so it would be better to find a more discreet way.

Yuri taps Otabek on the shoulder and points to the living room window. Someone passes through the room again, and Yuri realizes it’s the guard Yakov usually leaves upstairs when he’s relaxing below. Yuri has done that same patrol himself, and he knows it gets old really fast, because the guard can hear everyone else having a good time downstairs while he has to keep walking around the house and keep alert.

They need to get the guard to open the door, but not alert the rest of the men downstairs.

When the man passes the window in another room Yuri recognizes who it is. Not one of Victor’s men, but someone who Yuri has only exchanged a few words with.

They talk in hushed voices, try to decide the best course of action. Otabek does not look happy having to improvising chunks of the plan, and Yuri half-expects him to leave any second. But Otabek stays where he is while Yuri conjures up something that might work.

Might.

There’s that uncertainty again, and it relies heavily on the impression Yuri has on the guard patrolling inside the house. An impression based on a few minutes of conversation.

He can only hope his intuition is correct.

When the guard next strolls into the living room, he perks up as he spots Yuri, who is walking across the garden like he’s on a leisurely evening stroll.

Yuri ducks behind the nearest bush and hopes from the bottom of his heart that this will work.

His heart is trying to pummel its way out of his chest as he crawls under the bush so he can’t be spotted from the back patio.

He wants to cry tears of joy when he hears the door opening. The silent darkness of the garden seems to weigh a ton on Yuri’s shoulders as he waits. At the back door, the guard is similarly waiting, seemingly trying to see if there is more movement in the garden.

In a few seconds, there is a soft thunk followed by a thud, a clattering noise, and then a low whistle. The first three sounds were the guard going down and dropping his gun, and the fourth is Otabek’s signal to Yuri that the coast is clear.

Yuri pokes his head out from under the bush and then quickly makes his way to the back door where Otabek is waiting.

“I was right, they really don’t teach people to be very smart in the bratva,” Otabek mutters, standing over the guard’s body. “He walked right out, pointing his gun at the garden. Didn’t bother to check if someone was next to the door. Idiot.”

Yuri grimaces. It seems like Otabek wants to constantly remind him that he was a part of this.

He _was_ a part of this, and now he’s going around killing that part of himself.

There’s probably some symbolism hidden in all this, but Yuri doesn’t have time to stop thinking about symbolism.

Shooting the guard Otabek knocked unconscious is too noisy, so Yuri inhales, raising questioning eyebrows at Otabek and then looking pointedly down at the man.

Otabek looks down at the tousle of hair with one obnoxiously dyed red strand. He crouches down beside him and unsheathes the knife he has attached to the side of his thigh.

Yuri forces himself to look when Otabek shoves the knife into the side of the guard’s neck and then pulls it out, stepping back as blood gushes from the wound.

Otabek cleans the knife on the guard’s jacket while he’s dying, bleeding out with his carotid artery sliced open.

There should be more blood, Yuri realizes. He watches as blood gushes out of the wound, but it doesn’t look like a cut artery.

Yuri has seen artery wounds, and they’re usually messy as fuck.

“He’s bleeding down his trachea,” Otabek says in a quiet voice when Yuri mentions this. “That’s why it’s a deep stab, so you open the side of the trachea as well.”

Yuri grimaces. He’s not sure if bleeding to death or suffocating in his own blood would be considered the worse way to go.

Otabek sees his look of disgust and shrugs. “We are not the good guys, Yura. We are the bad guys going after _worse_ guys. No one in this house is going to any kind of heaven after this. Neither them nor us.”

And while all that is true, as they advance through the house, Yuri can stupidly only think about how Otabek just casually lumped them together as a unit, and how easily the diminutive of his name fell from Otabek’s lips.

The house is quiet as Yuri leads the way. Yuri explains the floor plan of the basement in a quiet tone, while Otabek listens and nods. They went over it already when they talked about the plan, but Yuri feels like he wants to go over it again, just in case.

They walk to the basement door that’s in the kitchen. As they close in on the door, noises can be heard from the basement. Yuri opens the door and the noise easily doubles in volume. There are voices talking and laughing, and music playing.

They seem nice and relaxed down there. Yuri smiles grimly. He looks at Otabek beside him, with his hood and his scarf covering most of his face aside from a pair of emotionless eyes. Looking at him now, it’s not easy to believe that Otabek could ever smile or laugh, but Yuri has seen it happen.

He wants to see it again, after this is done.

He inhales and sends a silent plea to whatever higher power might be up there. _Let this plan work. Please._

They descend the stairs quietly into the basement where there is a pool, some couches and armchairs around a coffee table and a bar in the back. Once they walk around the corner, guns drawn, Yuri realizes two things at the same time.

One: there are six men instead of three, seated around the coffee table beside the pool, playing poker.

Two: Victor is one of them.

He doesn’t have time to react to the sudden change in plans, because suddenly everyone in the room is diving for their guns and Yuri has to concentrate on only two things. _Stay alive and keep shooting until they are dead._

Beside him, Otabek is way ahead, launching a bullet into one of the men getting up. The man staggers a few steps, falls into the pool and sinks toward the bottom, spreading a cloud of red into the water.

Otabek is already shooting at another man, who manages to evade the first bullet but falls as the second hits him clean through the stomach.

A bullet whistles right beside Yuri’s ear, and he shoots back without thinking, the recoil kicking his arm painfully because he doesn’t have time to aim properly. He steps aside to take cover behind a corner, and his ears ring as another bullet leaves his gun almost immediately after the first.

Yuri glances from behind the corner. Otabek has managed to drop two more men to the ground and is now crouching behind an armchair. Through a haze Yuri sees Yakov diving behind a couch where Victor is already hiding. A few scattered bullets are shot from behind the couch, and Yuri ducks behind the corner again.

He realizes in a flash Yakov and Victor are the only ones left.

Yuri pokes his head around the corner and gawks at Otabek. How did he fucking kill _four_ men where Yuri only managed to shoot his gun twice and not even hit anything?

There’s probably a reason why Otabek is the deadliest hitman in the city.

The shooting has ceased, with the four of them taking cover in their respective ends of the room while the noises of dying men slowly cease. The man shot through the stomach is the last to stop whimpering, falling either into shock or unconsciousness beside the coffee table, and then only music coming from the stereo keeps blaring, filling the room with noise.

Yuri peeks around the corner and shoots the stereo across the room, because he can’t fucking _think_ with the music on and he has to hit at least _something_ tonight.

The music dies in a crackle of electricity and Yuri winces at the loudness of the gunshot and the silence that falls right after.

“Yura, what is happening?” Victor’s voice comes from behind the couch. “You vanished and then show up to kill us? What the fuck?”

Either Victor is really good at acting or then he has no idea.

“How about you ask Yakov,” Yuri grits back. “He ordered me dead. I was supposed to die that day when six of your men did. So when I didn’t, he fucking sent Georgi behind my door to kill me.”

There is a moment’s silence. Then Victor’s voice asks, hesitantly, “What?”

Yakov is whispering something behind the couch. Victor talks back in a low tone, followed by a louder, “What the fuck, old man, Yura is a fucking child, you—”

 _Not. A. Fucking. Child,_ Yuri wants to scream, but he just readjusts his grip on the gun, aiming it toward the couch. Otabek is crouching behind his cover, his gun aimed steadily toward where Yakov and Victor are hiding. What’s visible of his face is still an emotionless mask.

The sudden, ear-shattering gunshot makes Yuri jump like his skin wants to detach from his body.

In the silence that follows, Victor says, “He’s dead.”

Yuri keeps his gun aimed at the couch. It could just as well be a trick.

He almost shoots Victor when he rises from behind the couch, but his finger stops on the trigger when Victor shows his hands are empty. He holds them up in surrender. “Come check for yourself.”

Yuri glances at Otabek in a way that he hopes conveys, _cover me_ , and then slowly advances to the couch, where Victor is still standing with his hands raised. Yuri keeps his gun aimed at Victor, just in case, as he cranes his neck to see over the backrest.

One glance behind the couch confirms that Yakov is, indeed, very much dead.

Yuri looks at Victor, uncomprehending. Why would Victor shoot Yakov?

Victor glances toward where Otabek is. From this angle, the only thing visible is the muzzle of his gun peeking above the backrest of the armchair. “Can you ask your friend to not shoot me?”

Yuri’s mouth twitches at the definition. Otabek is definitely not his _friend_ , but whatever. “Keep your gun on him and shoot him only if he tries something,” Yuri says.

Otabek rises fluidly from behind the armchair and leans on the wall beside it. His gun never wavers or points at anything other than Victor.

“Why did you kill Yakov?” Yuri asks, lowering his own gun now that he’s certain Otabek can handle keeping Victor at gunpoint.

Victor swallows. “It was either someone shooting him or you killing us both, wasn’t it?” he asks.

Yuri exhales slowly. “I guess.”

Now that the situation is over, the adrenaline rush starts to diminish and Yuri shoves his gun into his pants to cover the trembling of his hands. It suddenly dawns on him that he’s standing in a basement room with several bodies lying on the floor, and it’s the second time this has happened within a fucking week.

It’s getting really old and he wants to be done with this already.

On the next inhale the scent of death fills his nose, so Yuri tries not to inhale through his nose anymore. It doesn’t get any easier no matter how many times he faces it. It’s the inevitable disgrace they all face in death—the iron smell of blood mixed with burst intestines and vacated bowels. If there’s anything his time in the bratva has taught him, it’s that the human body smells really awful on the inside.

Yuri stares at Yakov’s body. He’s still wearing that stupid hat even though the left side of his face is a bloody mess.

“I wanted to ask him, though,” Yuri says. “Why me? Aside from fucking up the deal with the Chinese, I’ve never fucking done anything to him that would be considered an offense. Or have I?”

Victor doesn’t exactly smile, but the corners of his mouth twitch. Perhaps it’s leaning toward a grimace more than a smile, Yuri realizes, as Victor glances down at Yakov’s unmoving form pooling blood on the floor around him.

“You were advancing up the ladder. You were good at everything you set your mind to.” Victor’s words are quiet.

“Why would that make him want to kill me?” Yuri asks, disbelieving. “You’d think he wanted to keep talent around, not get rid of it.”

This time Victor does smile grimly as he pushes his fingers tiredly through his hair. “You haven’t been around long enough to realize it, but being the head of a syndicate means keeping people who are dumb enough to follow your lead around, plus one smart person. The one who’s your successor.”

Yuri blinks. Somehow this brings to mind the words Otabek has repeated several times. _They don’t teach you to be very smart in the bratva, do they?_

“But what—?” he asks, trying to wrap his head around it.

“The more smart people you gather around, the likelier it is at one point someone decides they would rather become the one _giving_ the orders instead of following them.” Victor glances at Yakov’s body one more time. “You had potential to one day rise to challenge him or me over the bratva leadership. So he decided that you’d be less of a threat if you were dead.”

It suddenly clicks. Yakov was worried, not about what Yuri currently _is_ , but what he might one day _become_.

“And you don’t think so?” Yuri asks, the challenge clear in his tone. “That I should be dead because I can become a threat?”

Victor looks slightly uncertain, but he shakes his head. “I’d like to think the bond of brotherhood between us means more than that.”

Yuri has never hugged Victor and he’s not about to start now, but it’s close. Victor is such a cunning fox, though, because he’s saying everything he can to keep himself alive.

Victor swallows, his gaze flicking from Yuri to Otabek. “So, what happens now?”

Yuri sighs. As it is, the bratva is never going to follow his lead. So now he has two choices. Either leave Victor in charge of the bratva and disappear, or kill Victor to create a power vacuum that will shatter the bratva, and then disappear.

But even with Victor dead and the Feltsman bratva in pieces, someone will always step up to fill the void.

And perhaps it’s a comforting thought that he might have a friend in the city if he ever needs to come back.

“You tell them I killed Yakov and vanished. You take over the control of the bratva, and you continue your life,” Yuri says.

Victor relaxes visibly at the indication that he is going to live through the night. “And you?”

“I am going to disappear,” Yuri says. “I have no intention of staying around for the day when you decide that I’m a threat to your empire and try to off me.”

“I’m not sure I’d dare to do that, if the results look like this,” Victor says. He says it jokingly but Yuri can see the flash in his eyes. It’s fear, mixed with respect.

It’s a strange look to have aimed at him.

“You could stay,” Victor says. “Despite Yakov’s fears, we do need smart people around.”

Yuri shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “I’m done.”

Saying it out loud like that feels refreshing.

At nineteen, Yuri Plisetsky cuts ties with his bratva, leaves behind a wake of destruction and skips town laughing. It has a nice ring to it.

“So you will not send people after me or try to hunt me down,” Yuri says. It’s a threat veiled as a statement, and Victor only nods.

“Trust me, cleaning up this mess and taking over the bratva, I’ll have plenty to do. I have no interest in chasing you around the world.”

“Good,” Yuri says. “We’ll be walking up those stairs now. Don’t follow.”

Victor nods. He looks like he suddenly realizes that he’s going to be left alone with five corpses. “What happened to Minami?” he suddenly asks.

Yuri wrinkles his forehead. “Minami?” he asks.

“The guard upstairs,” Victor clarifies.

“He’s dead on the patio in the back,” Yuri says. “Better call in a clean-up crew.”

Victor nods.

Feeling so powerful as he does now is something that would be easy to get used to. Which is why Yuri needs to leave now, before he takes Victor’s offer and stays as Victor’s minion. It might end up well for him, or he might end up with Victor’s gun against his temple when he least expects it. The bonds of brotherhood are strong, but it didn’t stop Victor from killing Yakov in the blink of an eye when he realized it was for his own benefit.

Victor is nothing if not an opportunist. It’s one of the reasons he’s gotten this high up in the hierarchy.

Yuri gives Victor one final look. “Goodbye, Vitya,” he says.

“Goodbye, Yura.”

As they get up to the kitchen, Yuri closes the basement door behind them. “One more thing,” he says to Otabek. “If you hear a gunshot, don’t be alarmed.”

He goes to the office upstairs, leaving Otabek to guard the door into basement.

Yuri shoots the lock of Yakov’s desk drawer and finds a good amount of cash inside. He fetches a laundry bag from one of the bedrooms and stuffs the cash in. Then he walks downstairs to where Otabek is steadily aiming his gun at the basement door.

“Let’s go.”

At nineteen, Yuri Plisetsky walks out of a house with a bag of money, leaving behind a newly emerged bratva leader and six bodies. He’s followed by an emotionless hitman with a scarf covering the lower half of his face.

Otabek drops the scarf as soon as they’re back at the motorcycle.

“So, that happened,” Yuri says.

Otabek gives him a small smile and a nod. “Like I said, they don’t teach you to be very smart in the bratva,” Otabek says. “Good thing you’re smart even without teaching.”

Yuri shakes his head. He doesn’t feel very smart, walking into a basement room and killing people. But if that’s what is required to get away from all this, then sure.

He glances at his wristwatch for time. It feels like they spent hours inside the house, but in reality it’s only been forty minutes since they parked the bike here. Time loses all meaning when there’s a firefight going on.

Yuri can’t stop the stupid grin that spreads on his face as he touches his fingertips to Otabek’s face, warm and sweaty after keeping the scarf over his mouth for so long. Otabek blinks at the touch but doesn’t pull away. Instead, he turns his head and catches Yuri’s fingertips with his lips, briefly.

The touch feels like electricity on Yuri’s skin.

Otabek mounts the bike and Yuri climbs to sit behind him, the laundry bag slung over his shoulder. He glances toward the house one more time, and he thinks he sees Victor staring out the kitchen window, but he can’t be sure.

_Dasvidaniya, Victor._

The bike rolls down the street and out of the neighborhood. The wind tears at the laundry bag and Yuri’s clothes as the bike accelerates, and the strong current of air tastes like freedom.

Otabek wordlessly drives them to the outskirts of the city and parks the bike in the parking lot of yet another sketchy motel.

Yuri doesn’t question it when Otabek walks inside the building and past the reception desk. He figures Otabek has gotten the room beforehand, because he’s the type to always plan everything ahead.

What he doesn’t expect is the amount of stuff in the room as he steps in. The bed is a mess of blankets and pillows, and there is a laptop on the corner of the coffee table, clothes piled on a chair and some books on the side table. There is even a travel-sized coffeemaker and a fold-out drying rack in the room. It’s not the impersonal motel room booked just for one night.

No, this looks like someone lives here.

Yuri realizes in a flash that this is where _Otabek_ lives.

But why would he show this to Yuri?

Yuri hands over the laundry bag. “Your payment,” he says. “I didn’t count how much there is but it should be enough.”

Otabek raises an eyebrow at the bag and takes it, but he doesn’t start counting the money. Instead, he tosses the bag aside and steps closer to Yuri.

“Where are you planning to go now?” Otabek asks, his dark eyes measuring Yuri intently.

Yuri shrugs. “I was thinking somewhere in the Pacific. Plenty of small islands to go around.”

He doesn’t know why he’s telling the _Palach_ of his plans.

Perhaps it’s the way Otabek’s eyes watch him, like he’s something Otabek never expected to happen.

Yuri never expected any of this to happen either.

Otabek takes another step, and then he’s right against Yuri, his fingers brushing over Yuri’s cheek and going around to the back of his neck.

“Come home with me,” Otabek breathes, tangling his fingers into Yuri’s hair and pulling him so close their lips are almost touching.

Yuri’s eyes widen. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” Otabek says. “If you can retire at nineteen, I can retire at twenty-one.”

“Where is _home_?” Yuri asks hoarsely. He can feel Otabek’s breath ghosting on his lips.

“Almaty,” Otabek says.

The name rings a bell and then clicks. Kazakhstan.

Really, it doesn’t matter where Yuri goes, as long as it’s outside Russian borders.

“Okay,” Yuri breathes, before leaning forward and crashing their lips together.

They stumble toward the bed, hands roaming over arms, shoulders, shoulder blades. Yuri tangles his hair in Otabek’s hair and yanks, and Otabek moans as he’s forcefully pulled off Yuri’s lips.

Their eyes lock for a long moment, and then Otabek pulls against Yuri’s fingers in his hair, bringing his lips to Yuri’s jawline, mouthing his way up to his ear.

“Emil was right about one thing, though,” Otabek says, whispering the words hoarsely against Yuri’s ear, while his hands are working on the buttons of Yuri’s jeans.

Yuri pulls back from the touch to look at Otabek inquisitively. “Emil?”

“The bartender at the club where you found me,” Otabek clarifies. “When he found you in the storage.”

“Oh. What was he right about?” Yuri asks.

“You are _definitely_ my type.”

 

*

 

As they leave the city on Otabek’s motorcycle and the nose of the bike points toward Kazakhstan, Yuri wonders if the bratva syndicates will talk about the day when Yuri Plisetsky killed six Feltsman men and disappeared. He also wonders if they will connect his disappearance to that of the _Palach_ ; the mysterious hitman, who one day was there and then vanished without a trace.

Yuri hugs Otabek’s waist tighter as he thinks about it: the hitman who everyone was afraid of, the one with no weaknesses.

Yuri knows now the mysterious hitman does, in fact, have one weakness: Yuri.

So maybe it’s a good thing the weakness travels with him, wielding a gun.

And maybe it’s a good thing they’re clearing out of the city and out of the country to start over where neither of them have to bear the burden of their past.

At nineteen, Yuri Plisetsky can’t wait to see what life outside Russia has to offer. It must be pretty damn awesome, because it comes with a smoking hot hitman attached.

 

*

 

 

*

[[I made some art of their fighting scene in the motel room]]

 

**Author's Note:**

> So like I said in the beginning, I don't know anything about mafia AUs or the actual bratva. This fic was partially, albeit very vaguely, inspired by the 1999 movie _The Boondock Saints_ (which is a great movie btw and you should watch it!)  
>  -  
> Yuri will never know this because I couldn't work it into the story, but I can tell you that the one who slipped the note under Yuri’s door was Georgi, because he’s a huge softie. Even though he couldn’t disobey Yakov’s direct orders, he wanted to give Yuri a chance to escape. So he slipped the note under Yuri's door and thus unknowingly put in motion the entire series of events that led to Victor being the new head of the bratva and Georgi becoming his second-in-command when Victor finds out he helped Yuri. So good for you, Georgi, you accidentally helped yourself by helping Yuri ;)  
> -  
> Hit me up on [tumblr](https://worldofcopperwings.tumblr.com)! My ask box is always open!  
> -  
> Thanks to my lovely beta [thoughtsappear](http://thoughtsappear.tumblr.com). ♥


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